


dive into eternity

by Safe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, M/M, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-20
Updated: 2013-11-20
Packaged: 2018-01-02 04:55:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1052765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Safe/pseuds/Safe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was afraid of the sea. I was just afraid of losing him. But if he was willing to face his fear, then I might as well not be outclassed by a dead man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dive into eternity

It was something like sunny, seventy-six degrees and a little breezy, and he was just _standing_ there, arms wide and eyes closed, soaking it all in like he'd never seen it before or maybe like he'd never see it again. His hair looked funny, ruffled by the air like that, and he was wearing a shirt with something stupid written on it, but the sound of the surf and the expanse of blue eternity made it all perfect anyway.

I'd always figured he'd hate the beach, afraid of the water like he was. But I knew he liked it, because he always smelled like laundry detergent and sunblock and sea salt when I put my arms around him from behind, like then.

"Hey," I said, and I didn't really expect a response, so I wasn't disappointed when he didn't say anything. He put his hands on mine and it was something like serenity for a minute or two, me and him and waves breaking over the sound of nothing at ten o'clock in the morning.

I could feel the smooth letters on the front of his shirt and feel the soft fabric on my cheek and I figured I could probably stay there for the rest of my life and be okay. He was quiet, quieter than he ever used to be even when he was silent, and I figured he thought the same. His breathing was like the tide, rising and falling, pattern only slightly detectable. It was always like that, but it was softer, calmer.

"I'm going to die," he said, and it was a glass vase falling and breaking, tiny pieces skittering over wooden floorboards and the need to tread lightly.

I said, "So am I," and it was laughter, desperation. I figured he would turn around and give me a smile, and I would probably kiss him, and we wouldn't talk about what he _had_ to be wrong about anyway.

He did turn, but I didn't get to kiss him because he was turned his head upwards and even though I was taller than him, I couldn’t meet his lips. The look on his face told me I couldn't keep running from the truth, and I hoped mine said _yeah? Watch me._ It was ten-ten and rain started to fall, and it wasn't bizarre because we were expecting it.

"I don’t really like the rain," he said.

"I don’t really like hearing you say shit like you're going to die," I said, and it was more like a challenge than anything else.

He stood there for a moment, water sort of running down his face but more like just _crawling_ , like amoebae. The rain made him look like he was crying and it was transitory beauty I saw, until he hugged me so hard I couldn't breathe.

"Let's get back," he said, and it didn't take long for us to run to the car we'd rented - the big expensive one, not the little one. The only nice thing about running out of time was the irrelevance of material things, like money, but that wasn't a thought I had until after.

* * *

 

General time in Kihei was relative to us because morning was when we woke up and night was when we went to sleep, unless dark and light were switched. Breakfast was any kind of food and dinner was what we ate before collapsing onto the big bed in the master bedroom 

Kamaole Nalu really _did_ do condos nicely, and as long as we left everything as it was, my older brother wouldn't have to know we sneaked into his summer home in March. It didn't really matter anyway; Bro wouldn't care. I just didn't want to tell him why we were there. I couldn't say it out loud, and I didn't want John to say it either.

One day after he was mesmerized by the fire people at the luau, four days after we arrived, we were already tired of running around like eager kids in a toy store, tired of being 'tourists,' but the nice thing about Hawaii was that it was a _home,_ not a _resort._ When John rolled over to tell me good morning, voice soft and eyes still only just waking, I knew we were going to spend all day doing nothing, just because it was written in his movements and on his face like fine print. He was tired.

"I love you," he said, and I bit my tongue as cracks ran across my vision.

And then it was veins of light and the taste of blood, and I didn't want to say, "I love you too."

* * *

 

 

We took life jackets out of bro's closet and rented a kayak with the money that didn't matter, and pushed off at a popular spot. There were others there, but the nice thing about popular spots was that they were _safe._ John had little regard for his personal safety, but I wanted to keep him safe, because it wasn't really happening and when I woke up I didn't want to see that I had killed him in my sleep. 

I sat behind him because I was the strong one - I didn't have that alarmingly irregular breathing and I wasn't ill and I wasn't tired, except of waiting for what I didn't want. Sometimes he matched my strokes and sometimes he didn't, but if he got tired he'd pull his oar out completely and when I got tired, we drifted.

It was dangerous and stupid but so was sneaking off to bro's condo in the first place, and if John was really going to die, I wanted to go with him. I didn't tell him because he'd get angry, or maybe laugh so hard he started coughing and it wasn't something I could handle without killing him myself.

"You know, I think I want to die at sea," he told me, spreading his hands like eagles flying and the sun made his head burst into flames. "Just look. It's beautiful."

"You're afraid of water." I wanted him to stop talking, but if I told him to stop, he would start talking about _truth_ and _acceptance_ and other entirely overrated concepts. My stomach rose to my throat and I gripped my oar tightly so I didn't push him into the ocean.

"Well, yeah." He leaned back and I could only _just_ see his eyes. "But dying, out here…it would be like drowning in the sky, forever. An eternity of blue."

"Shut up," I told him. It was flattery and horror and I was flattered and horrified and the beauty of it all built up like calcite and I had to swallow the speleothem made of bile pushing up in my mouth. "You're ridiculous."

"But you love me that way."

"Yeah. I do." The kayak rocked suddenly and he was alert, tense. He wasn't expecting that answer and I had decided never to say it again, but I kept forgetting because the sticky air and sea salt made his hair look like a hedgehog and it was beautiful in a bittersweet way. He was never beautiful unless I looked sideways and he wasn't trying, but those were my favorite times.

"We should probably head in," he said, looking at the flag on the coastline. It was farther away than I'd thought, and for one moment I wanted to tell him to forget it because if he was going to drown I was too, but I started paddling anyway. He was looking at the ocean like it would reach up and grab him, and I knew the only reason he'd wanted to go out at all was because he could never wake up again.

He matched my strokes most of the way and it was too much gravity on my heart, because in the car he started coughing anyway. It was handsaws and a murder of crows saying hello and I wanted to lie down with him for a while, but when we reached it, I realized I had somehow forgotten how long that stretch of the Piilani highway was.

 _After_ , I could admit I had been too afraid to take the short way, because I didn't know if John would wake up again either, and I wanted to put it off for as long as possible.

* * *

 

 "I could live here for the rest of my life," I said, and I was a bird until he put his arms around me and my arms were pinned to my sides.

"So you don't think it's an overly hot _tourist stop?_ "

I could feel his breath in my ear and it was a laugh, but not at me. "I'd never been here. _I_ didn't know it was perfect."

From our secret place we watched the sun set, a marriage of sky and sea, the red of my eyes matching the sky and the blue of his matching the sea, his hands on my stomach and mine on his and his chin digging into my shoulder the way I hated. I didn't tell him because if he pulled away, it would be ghosts flying in circles inside of me, and I would push him off the hill into the sea.

We were lowly humans on Olympus and I wanted to appeal to Apollo before the ocean swallowed the sunshine but the only conceivable bargain we could make was with Poseidon. That was the one I wanted to avoid.

"It _is_ perfect," he said, words bouncing off the skin of my neck where he'd placed them and flowing into my ears. "But only because you're here with me."

"What happened to the smartass I used to live with? For _five seconds,_ can you stop being a romantic sap?" I wanted him to go back to normal, because a change for the sweeter meant he was thinking about all the time we didn't have. He was never sweet unless things were going sour.

It was a good thing he hugged tighter because ghosts swirled anyway when he said, "No."

* * *

 

 The second floor of Cheeseburger in Paradise was crowded and noisy, but we could hear the performer and the food was good and it was something every tourist was supposed to do. I didn't know what the burger was called, only that John ordered it and it had mushrooms and avocado on it. It tasted like sweet memories but I didn't take a photo, because photos made the experience less real and more real all at once.

"You're quiet today," he told me softly. "Quieter than usual, I mean."

"I've got a lot on my mind," I said. It was true and truth hurt, but every day ghosts swirled in me and the taste of fear had made itself present.

"We should take a walk tonight." He jerked his head forward, leading with his chin, and I knew it was the shops he wanted to reference. "We can go in there. Or we can go home, or to the beach…wherever you want."

"Or we could do them all," I said, and even though I knew he was tired, I wanted to do them all because maybe we could never do them again and the ghosts in me were swirling faster, getting bigger.

At the little marketplace we bought a charm he liked with the money that didn't matter. It was a blue symbol that sort of looked like tooth paste, or maybe like the wind if it had physical form. It circled a small patch of skin and I wanted to kiss it, but I didn't. I kissed the spot beside it, instead, the skin right over his heart, and he laughed but then he started coughing and I wished I could take it back.

* * *

 He told me he wanted to see a whale up close, so we decided to go on one of those whale watching boats if we could. We would snorkel and watch sea turtles and white-tipped reef sharks and other sea life, and maybe we'd bring a camera.

We stood by the sea, his arms around me and my arms around him, and we were a circle, eternal and perfect. He said he didn't have any regrets, and I told him he'd better think some up. I said it like joking, but it wasn't a joke. If he had no regrets, there was nothing to keep him from dying except me, and he had me in his arms already. I wanted to hurt him, to kick him or punch him or even just slap him in the face, but I only hugged tighter.

"I'm going to die," he said, and it was into my hair like a puff of magic.

I was too tired of pretending, so I said, "I know."

And somehow, even though it was five o'clock at night and it was raining, even though my stomach hurt because we hadn't eaten, even though we both had wet eyes, everything was okay. I pulled away and we smiled, and laughed until he started coughing.

Then we laughed again and it was a circle inside a circle, a ring drawn on paper by a preschooler with their older sibling's compass; double, eternal, and perfect. I looked at the ocean and used the waves to color it in, color it blue, and put it in my eyes so he would be able to see it too, if he looked.

* * *

 

 At sunset on the tenth day he pushed a little box into my hands and told me to hold it, so I did. Then he ripped his shirt off and ran into the waves. It was a little secret beach and it was raining a little, so the waves were bigger and I almost went after him but he turned around and waved.

"Open it," he called to me with his hands and his mouth, and then he started swimming in the water he feared and I did what he wanted.

The knots were hard to untie because he was bad at wrapping presents and because my hands were leaves in the wind, but I got it open and I was angry for three seconds because he put his charm and a note in it. All the note told me was that he loved me, he had no regrets, and not to follow him.

I was going to anyway.

But then I saw a big wave but not John, so I put the charm around my neck and the paper in my pocket and went back to the small car instead.

* * *

 

 Bro and Rose met me at the airport and tried to go to the carousel, but I hadn't brought anything back except some clothes and my little tube of toothpaste, which I carried onto the plane. I had wanted to throw everything away, but John had liked tasting my toothpaste when we were like starfish on each other, and his shirts smelled like detergent and sunblock and sea salt so I saved those too.

When I gave the key back Bro said he was worried and Rose didn't say anything, but there was rain in the sky of her eyes, and I wanted to apologize but calcite built up again and I didn't really want to apologize anyway because I wasn't sorry. 

I didn't talk on the way home, only watched as Houston became a city, and I thought about Hawaii and how John hated going to that mall. I figured I should go there because I could. I thought about California beaches and how John had never gone to one, and I figured I shouldn't go because it wouldn't be the same.

I sat on Rose's back porch and rocked the swing with my toes, and I still didn't say anything because nothing would come out. The swing stopped and for an infinite second it was the sound of nothing, but the gate opened and the silence broke and suddenly it was Jade in my vision.

She looked at me and her eyes became ovals and she said, "Whoa. It's _you!_ Where's John? He’s practically like, always attached to you! Did you guys fight or something? Ugh, you probably did something stupid to him again, didn’t you!"

Usually Jade’s little quips never bothered me. She meant well, and she wasn’t one to go out and verbally attack someone unless they seriously deserved it. But for some reason, hearing her talk about John and how _I_ could have done something to him to make him _not be here because he is dead_ set me off. So I ran at her threw my fist at her face and my brain wasn’t catching up with my actions because _she didn’t know_ but I had already knocked her glasses off and landed her on the ground.

But then I hugged her tight because it wasn't really her fault, and because I didn't have a reason to hit her in the first place. It was like blankets in the morning or shoes in the grass; I didn't know whether I wanted it or not. But she let me hug her and it really was what I wanted, because she was not Bro or Rose. She was someone who could read someone just on feeling, without any words.

I spent a few minutes wetting her shirt with the waves I'd put in my eyes, and when I stepped back she asked me again, a different way.

"He drowned on purpose," I said. "We went because they told him he was going to die. He said he'd rather die in Hawaii than in a hospital, so we bought tickets and left."

"Oh." It was good because she didn't tell me I was wrong to let him drown. Instead, she asked, "Wasn't he afraid of water?"

"He loved fire. He always thought if he spent too much time in water, it would extinguish the fire in him. But I guess once he knew he would die anyway…it didn't matter so much. He told me he wanted to die at sea."

"What a weirdo." It was nice because she didn't sound sad and she didn't feel sorry for me. She just understood. He was her friend, too.  "What did he have?"

"I don't know."

"He didn't tell you?"

"I wouldn't let him."

I hugged her again with dry eyes, and when we went in a little later, Rose asked, "Jade…what happened to your _eye?_ "

"I ran into a door," Jade said, like it was casual and something she would do, and it was funny. Rose looked at her like she was an idiot so we looked at each other and laughed, and everything was wrong but it was right anyway.

* * *

 

 The sunset always brings a sad smile to my face. When I can't take the sound of nothing when I wake up, I picture the beach and imagine the sound of the waves, sometimes with my eyes closed but mostly with them open. Sometimes if I open my arms wide and it's ten o'clock in the morning, I'm John and he's hugging me from behind, being me.

 Sometimes it's Terezi behind me, only it's not a half memory. She smells more like pineapple than detergent and she's more skinny and curvey than John was, but she's warm and she loves the sea as much as I do. If I'm too quiet and I don't turn around, she knows I'm remembering John but she understands and loves me anyway, and I love her for that.

Rose never understood why I came back, even though Jade did. But she never lost the person she loved, and she never understood how easy it is to let go of someone who got everything they wanted before they died. Jade had Eridan the same way I had John, so she understood that John wouldn't have wanted me to miserably hang onto his memory. Because he had no regrets.

I _do_ remember him every day, but I'm not miserable. I work with Terezi as a lifeguard and I learned how to surf, like I'd told John I wanted to do. That was when we actually built up the courage to move to California. When I'm out there on the water, I'm a part of it, and it's a part of me, and I sometimes say hello to John because he's part of it too.

Sometimes, even though I know he won't answer, I ask him what it's like to be the sea, if he's met Poseidon, if he talks to the whales he never got to see up close while he was alive. In those times I'm a bird again, standing on my board, and I can only ask because I'm concentrating on my weight, and not getting caught and pulled under.

Once, Terezi told me she could die at sea. I laughed because she had a big smile on her face, and because Equius told her she'd better do it on her own time so he didn't have to look bad for not saving a fellow lifeguard. But I smiled at her and after Equius looked away I whispered, "Me too."

It's true, because someday, I'm going to die, and maybe there's a life after - but if there isn't, I want to be there, forever, drifting with Terezi and John in that blue eternity.


End file.
